Mindful Living with Asperger's Syndrome: Everyday Mindfulness Practices to Help You Tune Into the Present Moment, by Chris Mitchell, is a guidebook on meditation and mindfulness specifically for autistic people, by an autistic person. At less than 125 pages, it's a short read, which is nice.
The main of the book discusses mindfulness, how it's helpful for autistic people, why you might want to start practicing it, and then, how to practice it. My attention as a reader was quickly drawn away from that by how hyperfocused the author was on the diagnosis.
The main of the book discusses mindfulness, how it's helpful for autistic people, why you might want to start practicing it, and then, how to practice it. My attention as a reader was quickly drawn away from that by how hyperfocused the author was on the diagnosis.
The words "Asperger's syndrome" are on basically every page, as if this is the most important thing about the reader and all the reader's personality traits and tendencies are derived from that. I found the repetition rather distracting and kind of superfluous to the topic at hand. It was so distracting that I stopped reading and counted. In the first 62 pages, there were exactly four pages that didn't mention Asperger's syndrome or autism in some fashion.
Honestly, it felt like the author was still in the "everything strange or different about me is autism" stage of handling the diagnosis, but that might not be accurate given that he wrote the book some 16 years post-diagnosis.
That highly distracting repetition aside, the book does walk you through several meditation and mindfulness practices and why they're relevant to autistic people in particular. The idea of mindfulness is to take your mind out of the past or the future, and focus on the present, including any sensations you might be experiencing. Practicing it can pull you from your everyday preoccupations, help you relax, and sharpen your observational skills regarding yourself and others.
The author opines that autistic people tend to get "stuck in routine," because routine in comfortable and safe. But then when the routine is disrupted, it's extremely upsetting and can cause meltdowns. With mindfulness, you can become more flexible to change, see social situations differently, and manage yourself better.
Most of the mindfulness practices were ones I'd heard of before, but there was one new one: walking practice. Generally when one talks about meditation or mindfulness, the assumption is that you're in some quiet place, sitting comfortably but with good posture, or perhaps performing yoga. Apparently you may practice mindfulness in the course of taking a walk, and that is also acceptable. I have trouble sitting still and focusing on simply being, so combining light exercise with mindfulness might be a good plan, and less likely to drive me batty.
I do kind of wonder about the effect of mindfulness on sensory sensitivities. The practices in this book instruct you to acknowledge and accept incoming sensations, like background noise, strain in your muscles, and any sensations on your skin. I suppose this makes me worried that practicing might lead to sensory overload, because being aware of all these things can be overwhelming and painful. That's literally how my flavor of sensory overload works: my brain stops even trying to filter out irrelevant noises and everything gets so loud and sharp and overwhelming that I have to go hide somewhere quiet.
I assume that's why you generally practice mindfulness in a quiet, comfortable environment, but as someone who hasn't really made a lot of headway with mindfulness or meditation, I really wouldn't know. Maybe mindfulness gives you a superpower to head off sensory overwhelm, if you practice faithfully and find what works for you.
In all honesty, I'm not sure this book was written for someone like me. I don't actually have much by a way of a routine to get stuck in. There are regularly scheduled events, but if those don't happen, I don't get really upset. Schedule changes are really only anger-inducing if they keep happening over and over, with the same events getting pushed back and back. I've accepted that life is unpredictable by nature, and that I have a certain amount of desire for new and interesting things. I have disabilities around sensory issues, but I tend to compensate for them and try not to let them keep me from going out or seeing friends and family.
This might mark the first time an autistic person has made assumptions about how my autism affects me, and been wrong. I don't know why that surprises me. Professionals, parents, and teachers get it wrong all the time. There are eleventy billion definitions of autism, and it's not like there's much agreement on the subject. So differing opinions, even in the autism community, would be nothing new or surprising.
Read This Book If
You're autistic, prone to getting stuck in routine, and want to change that using mindfulness. Also, make sure you can get past the endless repetition about your diagnosis. This is a pretty niche book, to be honest. It's fine at what it does, but it's pretty much the bare basics and doesn't strive to be more than that.
Honestly, it felt like the author was still in the "everything strange or different about me is autism" stage of handling the diagnosis, but that might not be accurate given that he wrote the book some 16 years post-diagnosis.
That highly distracting repetition aside, the book does walk you through several meditation and mindfulness practices and why they're relevant to autistic people in particular. The idea of mindfulness is to take your mind out of the past or the future, and focus on the present, including any sensations you might be experiencing. Practicing it can pull you from your everyday preoccupations, help you relax, and sharpen your observational skills regarding yourself and others.
The author opines that autistic people tend to get "stuck in routine," because routine in comfortable and safe. But then when the routine is disrupted, it's extremely upsetting and can cause meltdowns. With mindfulness, you can become more flexible to change, see social situations differently, and manage yourself better.
Most of the mindfulness practices were ones I'd heard of before, but there was one new one: walking practice. Generally when one talks about meditation or mindfulness, the assumption is that you're in some quiet place, sitting comfortably but with good posture, or perhaps performing yoga. Apparently you may practice mindfulness in the course of taking a walk, and that is also acceptable. I have trouble sitting still and focusing on simply being, so combining light exercise with mindfulness might be a good plan, and less likely to drive me batty.
I do kind of wonder about the effect of mindfulness on sensory sensitivities. The practices in this book instruct you to acknowledge and accept incoming sensations, like background noise, strain in your muscles, and any sensations on your skin. I suppose this makes me worried that practicing might lead to sensory overload, because being aware of all these things can be overwhelming and painful. That's literally how my flavor of sensory overload works: my brain stops even trying to filter out irrelevant noises and everything gets so loud and sharp and overwhelming that I have to go hide somewhere quiet.
I assume that's why you generally practice mindfulness in a quiet, comfortable environment, but as someone who hasn't really made a lot of headway with mindfulness or meditation, I really wouldn't know. Maybe mindfulness gives you a superpower to head off sensory overwhelm, if you practice faithfully and find what works for you.
In all honesty, I'm not sure this book was written for someone like me. I don't actually have much by a way of a routine to get stuck in. There are regularly scheduled events, but if those don't happen, I don't get really upset. Schedule changes are really only anger-inducing if they keep happening over and over, with the same events getting pushed back and back. I've accepted that life is unpredictable by nature, and that I have a certain amount of desire for new and interesting things. I have disabilities around sensory issues, but I tend to compensate for them and try not to let them keep me from going out or seeing friends and family.
This might mark the first time an autistic person has made assumptions about how my autism affects me, and been wrong. I don't know why that surprises me. Professionals, parents, and teachers get it wrong all the time. There are eleventy billion definitions of autism, and it's not like there's much agreement on the subject. So differing opinions, even in the autism community, would be nothing new or surprising.
Read This Book If
You're autistic, prone to getting stuck in routine, and want to change that using mindfulness. Also, make sure you can get past the endless repetition about your diagnosis. This is a pretty niche book, to be honest. It's fine at what it does, but it's pretty much the bare basics and doesn't strive to be more than that.
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